YMMV / Game of Thrones S8E1: "Winterfell"

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Arya's conversation with Jon, and especially how it ends with Arya telling Jon not to forget that they're family. Williams's delivery is ambiguous enough that many people have interpreted that she's actually issuing Jon a warning about what side should he be on, while others have interpreted that she's only reassuring him that they will stand by him and protecting him. Jon's reaction to Arya's line as they hug is likewise rife with possible interpretations: did he take it as a threat and is worried about his family turning on him? Is he having second thoughts about whether Daenerys might be using him and his sisters might be onto something? Etc.
  • When Daenerys tells Jon that she's their queen and, specifically, how she says that "if [Sansa] can't respect me..." Many people wonder how she meant to finish the sentence before she was interrupted, with some arguing that she only intends to impose her authority to Sansa, and correct her for her insubordination, while others point out how the next time she has a prominent scene with someone else, is to tell Sam how she had his family executed for not bending the knee.
  • When Sam says that Jon is the one who should be sitting on the Iron Throne, is he speaking from a legal perspective or from a personal one? He does have a pretty clear bias as Daenerys did just admit she executed his family while Jon is his best friend, and setting Jon against Daenerys is the only avenue of revenge he has available to him. On the other hand, Sam does have a point in saying that Jon would make a good king because he doesn't want a crown but has been able to handle authority even-handedly regardless, and he also notes that there's no way that Daenerys would give up the crown for the sake of the people, unlike Jon, and not even Jon himself can disagree with that.
  • Did Tyrion truly believe Cersei would come and help out the North against the Night King or is he purposefully lying or otherwise withholding information? Considering Tyrion is typically a relatively savvy character who reads into other people well, especially his own family, there seems little reason why he'd believe Cersei.
• Arc Fatigue: If you were annoyed at the Sansa/Arya conflict in Season 7 (commonly called Mean Girls of Winterfell), seeing it as a petty and boring Conflict Ball between two of the main female characters to fill time, and you were glad when it was resolved, don’t celebrate too soon, because here comes Daenerys and Sansa revving it back up again, for petty reasons at that.
• Ass Pull:
  • In the previous episode, Theon was under the impression Euron was going back to the Iron Islands. Here, however, he somehow knows to go after Euron's fleet at King's Landing without explanation and pulls it off without a single hitch.
  • The fact that only Targaryens (well technically anyone with enough Valyrian dragonrider blood, but that's been a distinction without a difference for the last 400 years) can ride dragons is standard knowledge in-universe, yet Dany puts Jon up to it on a whim with a blunt, "Go on," and Jon only has difficulty with Dany's No OSHA Compliance riding style (in contrast to her ancestors' saddles and chains per the "Histories and Lore" featurettes). The showrunners even acknowledge the Only Targaryens rule in their "Inside the Episode" and call Jon a slow learner for not realizing the implications, but don't explain why Dany would randomly expect Jon to be able to do it other than to move the plot along.
• Audience Awareness Advantage: The Northerners aren't exactly welcoming to Daenerys due to them still feeling sore over House Targaryen's actions before and during Robert's Rebellion, which included killing Rickard and Brandon Stark and Lyanna being taken by Rhaegar. The audience already knows that Lyanna actually ran away with Rhaegar willingly.
• Catharsis Factor: Bran being the one to greet Jaime, aka the man who crippled him and started the feud between the Lannisters and the Starks in the first place, is delicious Laser-Guided Karma. If Jaime has truly pulled a Heel–Face Turn, he needs to face the consequences of his actions, including when he pushed a child out of a window to save his own skin.
• Character Shilling: Arya telling Jon that Sansa is "the smartest person I've met" comes across as this. Sansa may have survived until now and isn't liable to trust Cersei, but a lot of the audience has taken issue with her so-called intelligence over the past two seasons (especially her actions at the Battle of the Bastards). And as noted on this page, whilst she has some valid points in the episode, her reaction to Daenerys's arrival and aid really isn't so intelligent given it's the only chance she and the North have to survive, not to mention that it would be smarter to befriend Daenerys and then work against her secretly than be rude to her in open court. Furthermore, whilst we don't know what Tyrion's reasons are for claiming Cersei is sincere, the only way that Sansa comes across as the smarter one is because Tyrion's intellect has recently taken a hit for plot reasons.
• Fetish Retardant: The scene with Bronn and the three prostitutes. Aside from Qyburn interrupting him, the prostitutes are so disinterested in him and mechanical about it that even Bronn gets annoyed. This is an Intended Audience Reaction since the ladies talk about the burn marks on Lannister soldiers in the Dragon attack, with graphic descriptions of their wounds, which weirds out Bronn, and then Qyburn comes in and casually says that one of them has an STD, making Bronn snap in shock.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Cersei asking about, and being disappointed in, her not getting war elephants.
  • The scene where Jon and Daenerys ride Rhaegal and Drogon has been compared to the How to Train Your Dragon series.
  • The fickleness and short-sightedness of the Northmen has been played up, especially Lord Glover (who has the dishonorable distinction of abandoning House Stark both during the Battle of the Bastards and the upcoming Great War).
• Memetic Troll: Bran spending the entire episode sitting in the Winterfell courtyard waiting for Jaime Lannister's arrival quickly led to an explosion of memes over social media. The main fuel is how every time any two characters have a conversation within sight of the courtyard, the scene ends with Bran staring at one of the characters.
• Special Effect Failure: Some of the aerial shots of the dragons flying over Winterfell appear particularly sub-par, almost looking like rear-projection 70s-era technology.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Most of the Northern lords' complaints of Jon relinquishing the title King of the North run quite hollow considering they stayed out of the "Battle of the Bastards", rather than fight alongside Jon Snow when he fought to reclaim Winterfell and (attempted) to rescue Rickon Stark, with those lords only aligning with Jon after Ramsay Bolton was defeated, when they agreed to give him the King of the North title.
  • Yara headbutting Theon after he rescues her, saying "now we're even". This is because Theon had abandoned her during Euron's attack the previous season, and apparently she is in the right for doing this. However, this comes off as really petty when you remember that Theon literally had no choice but to leave Yara, as he was surrounded by Euron's men, and Euron had a knife to her throat, making rescuing her impossible. Had he not run away, Yara would have never been rescued. It also comes off as hypocritical, since Yara was forced to leave Theon at the Dreadfort for similar reasons, but didn't even bother trying again.
  • Sansa says that she when she was stocking Winterfell, she didn't account for having to feed Daenerys's armies and dragons as well, with the implication that Daenerys is imposing an unreasonable burden on them by coming to Winterfell, but given that Sansa has known since Jon left Winterfell to treat with Daenerys last season that he would be bringing her forces back with him in the best-case scenario, why didn't she account for them?